Greener Hills on the Other Side
by meowthecat
Summary: Game AU, ensemble cast. Summer's usually a time to kick back and relax, but the wheels of war do not cease until they run their course.


A/N: It's been a while, but I'm going to try and revive this AU of mine. Keep in mind that you DO NOT have to read the first installment (_Rolling Around at the Speed of Sound_) OR the side story (_Chaos Chao and Good Wishes_) to understand this one. At least I hope so! Let me know in the reviews if anything's unclear and I'll do my best to patch it up.

Now let's do this!

ooo

_He was fighting another large robot. Nothing out of the ordinary, 'cept that this was a GUN robot instead of a Botnik._

_The battle raged until he saw the robot's weak point. Jumping into a ball, he struck the cockpit and destroyed the controls. The missile launchers and engines sparked and then ignited before the machine's legs buckled and took it to the ground._

_He landed at a safe distance and crossed his arms. "Hmph. Pathetic human."_

_**Huh? Why did I say that?**_

_Then the cockpit opened and a very familiar pilot scrambled out._

_**Why does he look so familiar? Wait…**_

_**He looks like one of the soldiers that killed her!**_

_Rage welled within him as he walked towards his target. He wanted to go faster, to catch right up to him and do __**something**__, but his legs wouldn't move any faster. _

_And the closer he got, the surer he was that the soldier clambering away was the very one who had shattered the lives of everyone he'd cared about._

"_Remember me?" he asked. "No… of course you do. But do you remember her? The innocent girl?"_

_His voice rose with anger. "The one you killed who did __**nothing**__ to you? Nothing bad to __**anyone**__? The one who died simply for the sake of your mission?"_

_The soldier's face suddenly hardened into resolve. "Our mission was to better the world: to usher in a new era of unity and peace—a weapon of the dark ages has no place here now!"_

"_Your mission failed," came a snarling reply. "And the dead of the past shall be avenged!"_

_He gathered Chaos Energy in his hand and aimed it at the soldier. "Now DISSAP—"_

ooo

"—EAAHH!"

Sonic the Hedgehog bolted awake, blue fur all on end and hands balled into fists. Thirty whole seconds passed as he gulped air in and out before he leaned back against the palm tree he'd dozed off under.

"What… the hell was that?"

The hedgehog moved one of his white-gloved hands in front of him and unclenched it. Just before, in the dream, he had held all that Chaos Energy in the same hand with the intent to… He shuddered. Would he have killed that person? He wasn't sure, and that was the worst part. Never had he ever thought he could feel that angry, even after Westside Island had been razed.

Someone he cared about more than anyone else had been killed, but… he couldn't remember who it was. It almost felt like Sonic had never met them.

It almost felt like he had been someone else.

The green-eyed hedgehog shook his head to clear his thoughts and looked around. It was summer now, and South Island was in full bloom. The sky was blue, the sun shone through the green leaves of the palm trees, and the Flickies were chirping happily. A slow wind teased the sunflowers. This was reality. Not the cold steel of the nightmare, but the warm grass of the Green Hill Zone.

He took a deep breath and let it out. "Well, doesn't look like I'm going to go back to sleep anytime soon."

Then he stood up and stretched, feeling the wind through his quills. Surveying the vista of loops and twists and turns, he felt that familiar urge to speed through them.

"Maybe a run will do me some good," he decided, and off he went.

ooo

Original series concepts by Naoto Oshima and Yuji Naka

ooo

The ground was grassy and slightly bumpy until he jumped onto a small boxy plateau with a skyward-reaching palm tree right next to it.

_That palm tree sure keeps growing!_ Sonic thought. _Used to be I could just jump on top of it._

ooo

Original games developed by SEGA

ooo

He turned towards the tree. _Doesn't mean I can't get up there anymore…_

He jumped and homing attacked the spring hidden within its fronds, bouncing him into the air.

ooo

meowthecat presents

ooo

As he soared above the nearest hillside, grabbing floating rings as he went, Sonic took in the blue sky, the green grass, the brown checkered earth, the broad waterfalls, and the air whistling past his ears.

This was the _life._

"Woo-hoo!"

ooo

Greener Hills on the Other Side

ooo

The hedgehog hit the ground running. He crossed a log bridge and barreled down the next hillside, grabbing rings as he went. When he ran up the halfpipe at the bottom, he was briefly sent into the air again before he rolled up into a ball.

The homing attack was pretty great if you needed to change direction in midair, even if there weren't any enemies around.

So he cut straight to his left and kept moving. The hedgehog jumped up a few more plateaus before crossing another bridge and ascending the hill further. At the end of the stretch was a steep dropoff with a spring right before it. Being a moderately reasonable hedgehog, he hit the spring and launched himself over the ravine.

By now he was high enough to be bouncing from one small summit to another, jumping off the odd large crag of marble, using homing attacks to cross the wider gaps, and dashing over crumbling ledges before they could give way on him. Then he hit another broad hillside and sped down it, picking up velocity until he entered the loop-de-loop.

A climb up, a zoom down, then a sprint towards the next slope. Hitting another half-pipe gave him enough air to see a cluster of small islands floating over a large pool of water. He knew he couldn't make it to them just by jumping, but maybe…

He spied a small tunnel in a nearby cliff. _Ah-ha!_

Once the hedgehog landed, he curled into a ball and rolled through the twists and turns of the tunnel, picking up speed as it snaked down and down, spitting him out onto a cliff and straight into another tunnel that was almost exactly the same. After he got out of that, it was down a hillside again to a large ramp that launched him into the air.

Just under those floating islands—_Darn! Missed 'em_—Sonic flew through what was practically a cloud of rings. He grabbed as many as he could, but it was impossible to reach all of them. _If only I had a way to touch all of them without an item… Ah, well._

When he landed he banked right along another checkered cliff, crossed a log bridge that offered a view of another waterfall, then jumped on a marble crag to get to another plateau. From there it was a sweeping run down past lines of palm trees to a little spit of land in the middle of a large lake.

This was his destination. Sonic slowed to a walk while surveying the tall waterfalls and trees that surrounded him.

"That was cool!" he exclaimed with a swing of his arm.

Then he sat down, reclined, and enjoyed the view.


End file.
